


Wonderful

by Iron Bitch (MaatKaReHatshepsut)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Tony Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 09:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20889695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaatKaReHatshepsut/pseuds/Iron%20Bitch
Summary: The Chitauri are gone, and Tony finds himself settling into a new normal....And is then promptly and painfully hit with a Clue Bat.Steve is Steve.





	Wonderful

**Author's Note:**

> This is short, and mostly sweet. I, like many others on ao3, prefer to live on an alternate Earth where, after 2012, the Avengers all moved into Stark Tower together, and became an adorable extended family.

After the dust has settled in New York; after Thor has carted Loki off to Asgard in chains, and SHIELD has scraped the last remnants of the vanquished Chitauri army into giant waste trucks, and their weapons into anonymous grey army-style trucks, (after Tony has quickly and quietly grabbed one of everything, and stuffed it all into a private storage locker in the lab beneath his ruined tower); after everyone comes back from their post-battle holidays, and congregates in the Avengers apartments Tony has unsubtly constructed in what was once the wreckage of the top floors, Tony discovers that he is developing a problem.

At first, he puts it down to a combination of over-excitement on his part- he has a family now, it’s weird, even Pepper and Rhodey can't handle him all the time- and residual Captain America hero worship left over from his childhood. Because sure, he’s been weirdly happy to be living with everyone, but Steve has become someone he is exceptionally happy to have around.

Most nights, when Doombots aren't invading some capital city, or some mad scientist's oversized pet isn't chewing on the Empire State Building, the Avengers get together on the common floor, and eat dinner in front of a movie. 

A lot of the time, that turns into an Educate Steve And Thor kind of thing, featuring Star Wars, Star Trek, and some of the more esoteric features of their childhoods, such as Clint’s beloved Cloak And Dagger. Sometimes, they watch something that's only a year or so old. Sometimes, Steve will mention a movie he saw once, or wanted to see.

Every now and then, embarrassingly, Tony gets JARVIS to hack Paramount, because Steve saw a movie poster last week, and is pouting because Clint and Nat won't go to the cinema on account of Spy Reasons.

Every time they sit down to watch the movie, plates full of takeaway, Bruce's curries, or Steve’s meat and potatoes fare, everyone else ends up wherever the heck they feel like sitting.

But Tony and Steve, for some reason, always end up side by side on the central loveseat (couch couch it’s a couch dear god why). Tony realises this in the middle of Tim Burton’s Batman, when he randomly decides to look around, a decision he immediately regrets.

He sees Clint on his right, hanging upside-down from the recliner, and realises he was sprawled out on the rug last night.

He sees Nat, lying on the long couch to his left with her feet in Bruce's lap, and realises she was in the recliner last night, and Bruce was sitting on the floor in front of her.

He sees Thor and Jane, nestled in a pile of pillows in front of the coffee table, and remembers them draped over each other on the long couch.

Darcy is the anomaly; Tony can't remember a night she hasn't watched the movie lying on her stomach on the carpet, chin resting on her Hello Kitty pillow. That doesn't mean much, though. Darcy is remarkably Sheldon-esque about some things. She has a ‘spot’ at the breakfast table, and woe betide anyone who sits in it.

And Dearest God, so do Tony and Steve, Tony realises.  
Tony’s dining table is a wide rectangle, and Tony and Steve sit side by side at the head of the table every morning, like goddamned lovebirds.

Tony begins to panic. How long has this been going on? How long have he and Steve been acting like a married couple?

He knows why he is panicking, of course. If none of it meant anything, he’d laugh it off, turn to Steve and jokingly call him ‘Mrs Stark’, or something. Now that he is aware of what he has, he’s terrified he might lose it.

Because it does mean something; it means everything, actually.  
Because he’s just realised that he’s in love with Steve.

A moment later, Tony's internally berating himself for not hightailing it to the kitchen to have his revelation/ freak out under the guise of grabbing popcorn, because he's gone stiff and wide-eyed and slightly hyperventilative next to a freaking super-soldier with enhanced senses (dear god why).

“Tony, are you ok?”, Steve asks, frowning, leaning over to rest his hand against Tony's cheek.

Tony frantically scrabbles for a coherent explanation. Steve's hand on his cheek, Steve's face a few inches away from his, Steve's bottom lip held between his teeth in concentration; all of that is conspiring to make Tony into incoherent gloop.

Then Tony remembers last week in the workshop at midnight. Steve came down in his pyjamas, with haunted eyes, obviously terrified he was going to be judged broken, or worse, unfit to lead.  
Tony, in hindsight helplessly in love, had opened up about his own PTSD; the nightmares, the counselling, the pills.  
By the end of it, Steve had looked as though an immense weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Apart from further proof Tony is hopelessly gone on Steve, the memory of that night provides an excuse for Tony to escape with.

“Trigger”, Tony mutters, leaping out of the love-couch! Couch!- and making like Speedy Gonzalez. As he bolts through the door he looks back, and sees the look of confusion on Steve's face being replaced with worried understanding.

Tony runs down the hall, into the summer lounge at the other end, and faceplants into the thick floor rug. He buries his face in his hands, and begins to mutter figures from the armour specs into the floor, in the hope of getting his heartrate and breathing under control some time soon.

He’s so focussed on reciting armour plate dimensions into the two-inch white pile, he doesn't hear soft footsteps enter the room.  
So immersed in force calculations, he doesn't notice the sound and sensation of someone gracefully kneeling beside him on the carpet.

In fact, he only realises Steve has followed him into the room when Steve's large hand begins to stroke reassuringly over his upper back.

Tony leaps half a foot in the air, and makes the kind of noise he would usually attribute to a guinea pig.

In response to this, Steve wraps his arms around Tony, and pulls him into his lap.

“Shh, Tony, it’s alright, it’s me, you’re safe.”, Steve murmurs into Tony's hair.

Tony gives in to hysteria, buries his face into Steve's left pectoral, and begins to shake like a coked-up bunny rabbit.  
Steve takes that as a cue to make more comforting noises, and gently run his fingers through Tony's hair.

Surprisingly enough, that works.  
After a few minutes, or an hour, or whatever- Tony’s too out of it with panic to be able to tell- Tony comes back to himself, registers the lack of movie sounds from down the hall, and looks over Steve's shoulder.

The whole team is standing in the doorway, staring at them.

“Jesus fuck”, Tony grumbles, feeling his face heat up in shame.

Steve turns and gives the team a Look, and they back away into the hall. Out of sight, but only just beyond the doorless frame, the shameless eavesdroppers.

Steve gently puts his hands on either side of Tony's face, and moves into his line of sight, blocking his view of the now deceptively empty doorway.

“Are you ok now?”, Steve asks, softly. His eyes wander over Tony's face. His thumbs gently stroke Tony's cheeks.

Steve is looking at Tony like he cares, like Tony is his world, and Tony wants to kiss him so badly.

Then Tony remembers why realising he loves Steve is reason to have a panic attack.  
Because Steve is from the 1940s, and once planned to marry Tony's gorgeous-and-very-female Aunt Peggy, and has never shown even the slightest hint of being anything but brutally straight.

Now, Tony wants a drink.  
But Steve looks worried, and Tony can't bear to be the cause of that for a moment longer.

Tony knows that he can't bring out his P.R. smile, because Steve knows him too well, so when he smiles at Steve, and says, “Yeah, I’m ok.”, it’s small, and sad, and real.

Steve obviously puts the sadness down to PTSD blues, which, ow, guilt, but Steve just says “Ok”, hugs Tony one more time, and then helps him up, and walks him back to the movie room, one large hand in the small of Tony's back.

They pass the team in the hallway, and everyone silently files in behind them. 

Tony takes his seat on the love-couch, dammit!- and everyone files past him to their spots, making a point to pat him on the arm, or give him a quick hug.

The unspoken love in it all brings Tony to the edge of tears.

Last of all, Darcy is standing in front of him. She stares at him for a long moment, Hello Kitty pillow clutched to her chest, then leans in to hug him.  
Tony abruptly remembers reading, in her file, about a serious childhood car accident and antidepressants.  
When Darcy walks away, Tony is holding her Hello Kitty pillow.

Tony blinks, and finds that he and the Hello Kitty pillow are in Steve's arms, and the movie has been resumed at the next scene, completely skipping the scene Tony suddenly remembers they had been watching, the one where Jack Nicholson's Joker tortures that guy.  
Tony thanks whichever God is listening that his freak out had happened at an understandable point.

It would have been a bit weird if he’d run out of the room in a panic in the middle of the Jerry Hall scene.  
But then, Tony thinks wryly, unable to hold back a grin, he probably could have claimed it gave him flashbacks to the thing with Christine Everhart.

Steve sees the smile on Tony's face, and presses a kiss to the top of Tony's head.  
Tony can feel Steve smiling into his hair.  
In that moment, he decides that, whatever happens, he’s not going to do anything to jeopardise this.

So, of course, the only option is Major Denial, which is Tony’s middle name.  
The ‘Edward’ on his birth certificate is a typo, duh.

(Tony will wonder, later, in the midst of Major Denial, why he didn't just throw himself off the landing pad on the roof, sans Flashy Metal Suit, at this point. It would have saved him a lot of angst, even if the pavement below was cleaner for it.)

…

The next morning, Tony's alarm goes off at the ungodly hour of 8 am. As he has for the past year, ever since Steve mentioned he missed Tony at breakfast, Tony responds to this by cursing loudly, but rolls out of bed and staggers out of the penthouse and down the stairs.

Bleary-eyed, Tony shakily wanders into the kitchen, and makes a beeline for the coffee machine.

Steve intercepts him a metre away, and chuckles as Tony persistently attempts to reach around him, making grabby hands at the coffee pot.

“Stop, Tony. Your mug’s on the table.”, Steve manages to get out between bouts of laughter.

Tony is not lucid, by any definition. This is a good thing, really, because Steve has just showered after his morning run, his t-shirt is tight, and damp, and transparent, and he smells incredible.  
Oh, and he’s basically holding Tony in his arms.

“ ‘S coffee in’t?”, Tony slurs.

Steve smiles down at Tony fondly.  
“You bet.”

“‘K”, Tony murmurs, eyelids at half-mast, and staggers over to the table.  
Steve follows Tony over, pulls his chair out, pushes it back underneath him, presses a kiss to the top of Tony's head, and then walks back into the kitchen.

Tony wraps his hands around the mug and pulls it towards himself, never taking his eyes off Steve.  
Tony takes a sip.

Steve scoops a dollop of pancake mix into the frying pan.  
Tony watches the movement of his arms and shoulders, and takes another sip of coffee.

Nat walks in to the dining area, and takes the seat on Tony's left.

“Mornin’, Nat says around a yawn, ‘What’cha doin’?”

“Watchin’ Steve’, Tony replies absently, taking another sip of coffee, ‘ ‘S my favourite thing to do.”

In the next moment, Tony's brain finally wakes up, and he realises two things.

One: Steve is frozen over by the cooktop, with his back to Tony, very obviously waiting to hear- because he has super hearing, and can hear everything, Tony, you idiot- why Tony likes watching him so much.

Two: Natasha is looking back and forth between them with a shocked look on her face, like she's watching a really fast replay of the world's most interesting tennis game.

Tony does the only thing he can do: he chugs his coffee, gasping at the burn down the back of his throat, then leaps up from the table and runs.

He doesn't stop running until he’s through the door to his workshop, at which point he yells, “Lock it, J.”, and collapses against the wall.

He has to figure this out, and then fix it somehow. How did this horrible thing happen?

“JARVIS’, he rasps through the coffee burn in his throat, ‘How long have I been in love with Steve?”

After a moment’s pause, JARVIS answers, with infinite kindness in his voice.  
“Physical symptoms consistent with romantic attraction were first detectable one year, three months, and four days ago, Sir.”

Tony sits a moment in silence, staring at his arms, where they are wrapped around his knees. After a moment, he looks up at the display opposite him.

“JARVIS, play the security footage of that moment.”

There is silence, and then the holographic screen fills with footage of the rooftop garden. To the right of the video, JARVIS helpfully brings up the recording of Tony's vitals from that moment.

On the screen, three months after the Chitauri incident, Tony and Steve are looking over the sea of construction cranes that then constituted the New York skyline, talking about Avengers equipment upgrades.

“...but the problem with the polymer I’ve developed for your suit is, I haven't worked out how to make it as thin as spandex but still bulletproof yet. If I can't get that down, your new suit will be almost twice as thick as that thing SHIELD gave you.” On screen, Tony is gesticulating, slightly anxious, his naive willingness to do anything to make Steve his friend striking Tony, sitting in his workshop more than a year later, as rather sad and pathetic.

On the screen, Steve obviously doesn't think so, though.

Steve stares at Tony a moment, and says,  
“Tony, that's incredible.”

“Yeah’, Tony chuckles nervously, looking away, ‘I’m usually good enough at this kind of thing, I swear.”

“No, Tony’, Steve says, gaze still riveted on Tony, a look of wonder on his face, ‘That's truly incredible. You’re incredible. Your creations are always so wonderful, but it's the heart behind them that always amazes me. There’s so much good in you, Tony, but you never give yourself any credit for it.  
You build things Jules Verne never could have dreamed of. And you build them to protect people.  
I know I’ve apologised over and over for what I said to you the day we met, but I have to do it again.  
I’ll always be sorry, Tony, because I could not have been more wrong.  
I’ve said, before, that you're the best person I’ve met in the future, but that's not quite the truth.  
The more I get to know you, Tony, the more sure I am that you are the best person I have ever known.  
You are so much more than good enough, Tony.”

Tony watches, amazed, as Past-Tony’s head snaps away from pretending to contemplate an exposed girder, as he stares at Steve in shock as he speaks, and, at the end, as his face breaks into a smile so bright it hurts Now-Tony to look at (shut up he can refer to himself as ‘Now-Tony’ in his head if he likes he’s not good at English ok shut up shut up).

Tony hits pause on the feed, and takes a moment to stare at his own stupid, obvious face.

“Fucking fuck”, he growls under his breath, raking his fingers through his hair, and slowly slumping into a puddle of angst on the floor.

…

Tony comes out of his workshop three days later.

It’s not like he meant stay in there quite that long- really, truly- but it's the darndest thing. Every time he goes on an inventing binge, he falls into some weird fugue, which can only be broken by (involuntary) sleep. It’s probably his Aspergers playing up. And every time he has a major freak out, he goes on an inventing binge.

So. Vicious cycle, right there.

He spends the first day upgrading the armour’s shoulder-cannons, then passes out face-down on a screen full of schematics.

He awakes refreshed, and feeling a lot better about this whole Loving Steve deal. He decides to get out of the workshop, make his way upstairs, and slip a note under Steve’s door with some horrible lie on it, something like, ‘I was looking at you at breakfast yesterday because I think your bodysuit dimensions might be wrong. When you get a chance, come down to the workshop so I can measure you’.

It’s a pretty straighforward plan, apart from the fact that it is entirely based on lies, (and the fact that his brain gives a gigantic stutter when he thinks of what ‘measuring’ Steve is going to entail), but it might be just enough to convince Steve that what he’d heard yesterday was a garbled amalgamation of a couple of different thoughts out of Tony's undercaffeinated, morning-averse brain.

If Steve doesn't pick up on that idea, and asks Tony what it was about, Tony figures he’ll say he was thinking about upgrading Steve's uniform, and about how inventing is his favourite thing to do, and some wires obviously got crossed when Natasha asked him what he was doing.

By God, does Tony hope it doesn't come to that. Lying to Steve is just about impossible for him. 

Tony always takes one look at Steve, standing in front of him, with his earnest blue eyes, and his Steve-ness, just being Steve all over the place, and the truth comes screaming out of Tony like a demon out of some dude on Supernatural (he doesn't watch it, shut up, he just happens to be in the room with Darcy and Nat and Steve when they watch it, shut up shut up shut up it’s not like the other two media rooms on that floor are just as comfy quit judging him).

So, after a day of focussed (desperate) inventing, Tony comes up with this brilliant (horrible, cowardly) plan to fob Steve off (lie like a cheap rug), and even make it easier to lie, by setting it up by note (not looking into those beautiful eyes in that beautiful face on that beautiful man who trusts him so much and believes he is good). 

Tony walks to his workshop door, reaches out to push it open, and then freezes stock-still like a startled deer.

“JARVIS’, he says, carefully, ‘What time is it?”

JARVIS pauses a moment before he answers, and Tony knows what that means. 

“It is morning, sir”, JARVIS replies, carefully.

His A.I. is way too smart for Tony's good. JARVIS is reluctant to answer, and that means Tony is about to walk into a trap.

“What time in the morning?”, Tony asks, stone-faced.

The last time JARVIS had been this evasive, Rhodey and Pepper had been waiting in Tony's workshop, preparing to stage an intervention.

The time before that, JARVIS had helped Pepper record a timed message, which had been carefully designed to break Tony's heart as gently as possible.

JARVIS finally answers.

“Eight-thirty a.m., sir.”

Tony reformulates his plan. It’s Breakfast Time, so Steve and the other Avengers, (plus Darcy and Jane, likely minus Thor, who is on Asgard- guarding Loki’s ass, haha- some of the time), are in the kitchen, where Steve is cooking up some variation of a Breakfast of Champions (or Supersoldiers, Spies, Demigods, and Tony the Pet Human, whatever).

Which means that Tony can sneak past.

Unless…

Unless JARVIS is hiding something else.

“J’, Tony begins, fake-sweetly, ‘Where’s Steve?”

JARVIS pauses again.  
Sometimes, Tony doesn't like being this smart.  
Being right.

Eventually, JARVIS responds.

“Captain Rogers is seated on the floor beside the workshop door, with a tray containing two servings of breakfast, attempting to negotiate his way inside.”

Tony leaps away from the door as though it is on fire.  
Guilt blooms in his chest, like heartburn mixed with shrapnel.

He has to check that his arc reactor is working, because it feels, for a moment, as though it has stopped.

Scalded by guilt, he turns and practically runs back to his workbench, pulls up the schematics for Nat’s Sting, and throws himself into it like a drowning man claws up towards air.

He has to resist the urge to smack himself when he thinks that it’s the other way around, actually, because Steve is air, and being absorbed in work is, for Tony, a waking sleep; a temporary, conscious, death of self.  
For years after his parents died, it was the only thing that helped.

He passes out hours later, and wakes up with the memory of the trap JARVIS had set fresh in his mind.

He asks straight away, and discovers it is two p.m., and Steve is sitting outside his door with a plate of Clint’s enchiladas (Tony's stomach growls, because the smoothies Dummy and You feed him are great, in that they are definitely one of the main reasons he is still alive, but they are not Clint’s enchiladas).

Tony is hit afresh by guilt, hightails it back to his desk, and falls into the newest Starkphone blueprints (Pepper will be pleased, but she will also be extremely concerned, because Tony always finishes S.I. stuff late, because Avengers stuff is cooler and more important because it keeps his family alive).

He emerges again the next day, when Dummy sticks his smoothie straw up his nose while he sleeps.

(JARVIS is apologetic, and says that Tony was talking in his sleep, and no matter what JARVIS said, Dummy wouldn't believe Tony wasn't awake. Tony isn't sure he believes that, plausible though it may be.  
As it turns out, he was right to doubt it.)

Still half-asleep, Tony asks JARVIS,  
“Is Steve sitting beside my door again?”

“No, sir”, JARVIS replies promptly.  
Suspicion stirs in the back of Tony's sleepy brain, but he is hungry, so hungry he can feel his stomach chewing itself, and he can't think straight over that internal cacophony of hunger.

So he opens the workshop door, and, without looking around, walks quickly over to the stairs.  
Then someone, who has stepped out of the shadows by the door and followed him over to the staircase, gently stops him with one hand on his shoulder.

Tony shrieks like a very small (girl) child, and spins around.

Steve raises his other hand, palm open, placating, rubbing Tony's shoulder with the hand he used to stop Tony.

JARVIS is a giant traitor, and Tony is going to sell his mainframe for scrap metal.

Steve chuckles, and Tony realises he said that out loud.

Tony panics again.

“Tony, Tony, it’s alright,’ Steve says, holding Tony back, when he would have gone pelting back into the lab, and further perpetuated his cycle of avoidance and accidental anorexia, ‘Whatever bad thing you think I’m going to say, or do, I’m not, I promise.”

Even as he thinks that Steve can't possibly know exactly what he is afraid of- and, that if he did, he would surely run a mile, and wouldn't be standing here, treating Tony like a skittish but beloved pet cat- Tony feels the timbre of Steve's voice penetrate his animal hindbrain, and all of the fight-or-flight seep out of him.

“There now, that's better”, Steve says, looking relieved.

Steve leans down, slightly, and forward, and looks Tony in the eye.

“So,’ Steve says, softly, ‘What happened?”

Tony opens his mouth, and tries to lie.

The truth, naturally, comes tumbling out.

...

Whole minutes later, Tony comes back to himself, to the knowledge that he has just told Steve everything.  
He has just confessed his love to Steve in excruciating detail.

Tony feels flayed open, and is pinned to the spot by anxiety.  
The expression on Steve's face is sphinx-level inscrutable.

“Why did you run away?”, Steve asks.

Tony replies completely honestly, and it scrapes his throat like shards of glass on the way out.

“Because you could never want me that way. And even if you could, you would deserve better.” It comes out rough, and grief-stricken.

Steve shakes his head.  
“You’re so wrong”, he says.  
Tony opens his mouth to respond, but then.

Steve kisses him.

It’s amazing.

Steve kisses Tony like he’ll die if he doesn't, like he’s wanted to forever, like he's afraid he’ll never get the chance to again.

Suddenly, a whole lot of things click into place in Tony's head, and he realises that it takes two people to permanently commandeer a loveseat.

Two to make a permanent set of lovebirds at one end of the dining table.

Two to create a relationship that is called ‘friendship’, but is too deep, involves too much touching and too much time spent together, and somehow rules out dating for both participants.

Tony kisses Steve back. They clutch at each other and make embarrassing noises.

They end up curled up on the beat-up old couch in Tony's workshop, naked, entwined, and smiling at each other.

…

When they tell the team- holding hands, nervous, unable to make eye contact- everyone bursts out laughing.

As it turns out, they were both obvious to everyone but each other.

Pepper sends them flowers, with a note that simply says,  
“Dear Steve and Tony,  
It’s about time.  
Love, Pepper.”

Natasha teases them mercilessly.

Thor proclaims his joy at his “shield-brothers’ love” loudly.

Darcy babbles about ‘shipping’ them.

Rhodey grins, hugs them both, then gives a smiling Steve the shovel talk in front of Tony, who is mortified.

Clint shoots them both with pink suction-cup arrows decorated with hearts whenever their guard is down.

Bruce is mercifully quiet, but pulls them each aside on two different days, and tells them how happy he is for them.

Jane announces that she and Tony now have a club for “Scientists Who Love That Superhero Booty”.  
Tony dies of shame in his seat at the table.  
Everyone laughs. Even Steve, that traitor.

Fury, when he finds out, pulls a face that says, “How is this my life?”

Ultimately, everyone eventually gets over it. Steve and Tony become Steve-and-Tony easily, and in the end, outwardly, little changes.  
Movie night only becomes slightly more cuddly (good god, they were so obvious why did Tony ever think otherwise).

Little has changed, but everything is different.  
Steve is still Tony's best friend, but now he is also everything.

It’s wonderful.


End file.
